Good Morning!, Finally raining. Snow on the way this afternoon. Chickens are on their summer pasture and the ravens are picking off eggs already. A little nasty weather the next few days and looking like a great weekend on tap. First day of the summer market and they are forecasting 75 and sunny. Myself and the help will be planting cucumbers, basil and tomatoes today. Hopefully a bit of office time in the next few days as well. Need to move the new peeps next and some more roosts built.

Rain? Could really use a bit. Perhaps some snow this week. Should be an interesting weather week. Trying to get the greenhouses set for the summer still. Salad looks good, early salad in the field is looking very thirsty right now. Just not ready to irrigate yet. Chickens continue to be a pain in the neck. Coop is almost finished. Need to get meat birds ordered. First summer market is this Saturday. Really hoping to have radishes, scallions, leeks, chives, eggs, salad, and spinach. Hope it's enough. Soup too. Have I mentioned that cub cadet makes an incredibly crappy lawn mower? Well they do. Took it our for the first mow of the season and it promptly stripped a blade and spindle. I replaced all of them twice last summer.......... Well gotta go. I made the mistake of taking a nap yesterday instead of watering all my flats in the greenhouse. Ouch. I think they will be fine but I surely inflicted stress on them.

Hey Two posts in one day. Thank God for the snow, sleet, rain, hail and wind today!!!!! I finally had time to slow down and work with a new employee and above all else think. Nice to have someone come up to try out and actually work with a sense of urgency. He actually ran in the greenhouse to get his t-shirt so we could go outside and get some stuff done. Basically he was keeping up with me. Making some real good beef chili for market tomorrow right now and have to bag salad still. Hmmmm bag salad...drink red wine...stoke the fire in the fireplace.......get er done.

Oh....Coconut Green Curry Root Veg soup tomorrow also. They are calling for another 1-3 inches of slushy stuff in the next 24 hours so some good hardy soups are in order. Peeps have been evicted from the greenhouse and are living in the "bachelorette pad". Two of them have taken up residence in the garage on the office stairs and two more are currently living under the front porch. The garage pair have been promoted director of HR and VP of HR while the two under the porch merit some title but I have not figured that out yet. I am still the lowly farmer. I just can't seem to wrangle a promotion out of the chickens..........

Well....Last "winter" farmer's market is tomorrow. VC gym from 10-2pm. Fitting that we will have snow this weekend. I have about an inch of it this morning. It's nice since it forces me to slow down and focus on the greenhouses. It's way too early for this warm weather. The asparagus is going to be very confused, come up early and then get frost and die back. the chickens are very confused with the white stuff. So what else is going on........ CSA has only 2 shares left to sell and we are full. A fair amount of the early early outdoor plantings have germinated and popped up through the soil. Weeds are getting an early start also. Saw my first tarnished plant bug of the season the other day. Killed the little bugger too. Nematodes have been added to the greenhouse soil in high hopes of controlling chafer beetles this year. Aphids are having a population explosion in the spinach. Turned loose the green lacewing larva. Hopefully they will get a handle on them before the summer stuff goes in. Quite a bit of carpentry needs to get done at some point around here. Definately need a heated potting shed. The use of the basement has reached capacity and then some. This will be the last year I am down there I hope. Deer pressure is going to be huge issue this year. Shooting will finally have to start. Much to the neighbors chagrin. Gotta go.

Well there you have it. Snow this morning, not much, but..... Supposed to be good fertilizer because it's melting and does something with ion exchange in the soil. Also makes me realize I am not as far behind as I think. Still quite a bit to get done this month. In May things will go full tilt for the summer.

70 degrees and thunderstorms in April? Ah well something like this happened last spring. We had a real hard frost on June 6th. Ouch. Still I have started planting some things outside early and under remay. Need to get the chickens penned on thier summer pasture. They are into everything the little stinkers. Worse than a board of directors. Soup keeps humming right along and ingredients are starting to come available again. New tractor is great. The real problem is how do I lose my winter hibernation fat sitting behind the steering wheel? Last winter market on April 17th and if things hold out we will be on the VC green. Gotta go pick up some kids.